Terra Incognita - What to Do With Despots Who Fight to the Bitter End?

Bahrain Repression Indicates Just How Scared of Iran the Saudis Truly Are

IMF and Standard & Poors Both Issue Warnings on Unprecedented US Debt

As Libyan Stalemate Looms, NATO Increases Involvement

South Africa Formally Joins BRIC Group, Signaling China’s Dominance

And much more...

The entire bulletin is available for subscribers. Over the upcoming week we will release analysis from the bulletin to our free Geopolitical Analysis section of the Wikistrat website, first being "Terra Incognita - What to Do With Despots Who Fight to the Bitter End?"

Whether or not the planet’s ongoing wave of political revolt ultimately earns the moniker, the “fourth great wave of democratization,” intervening great powers ponder the question of what to do with leaders who are deposed or in extreme jeopardy. The realist is more willing to cut a deal for immunity, so long as a quick departure is achieved and bloodshed subsequently ended. The idealist tends to be uncompromising, demanding a trial suitable for the “many crimes” committed by the despot over the years – or perhaps just the preceding few weeks. In truth, there are no easy answers – just historical precedents that rarely translate across political border.

One thing seems clear: if the leader and his family are not hurried out of the country, eventually the rebels or revolutionaries get around to levying their charges. On this score, one has to wonder if it would not have been better for the US and Saudi Arabia to have whisked the Mubarak family from Egypt. Now facing charges that conceivably result in death penalties, the fate of father Hosni and son Gamal has to weigh heavily elsewhere in the region, where historically most leaders are either killed or die in office. Already we see similar dynamics at work.

To say that President Barack Obama’s foreign policy plate is full right now is a vast understatement, and it couldn’t come at a worse time for a leader who needs to revive his own economy before trying to resuscitate others (e.g., Tunisia, Egypt, South Sudan, Ivory Coast – eventually Libya?). Faced with the reality that America’s huge debt overhang condemns it to sub-par growth for many years, Washington enters a lengthy period of “intervention fatigue” that – like everything else, according to the Democrats – can still be blamed on George W. Bush.

Reader Comments (2)

How amazing the end to our own civil war seems now. Grant telling Lee's men to go on home. That simple. Bob Redford's movie about the conspirators is off the mark. Somebody had to die for killing Lincoln. The nation would not have it otherwise.

Eamon De Valera stayed in Ireland after their civil war ended. He later became president. My father, on the other hand, got the hell out. Thought their might be a bullet "with his name on it."

The Russians knew they had to kill the Czar and his family. The Loyalists would have fought to restore him if he lived.

We turned our back on the Shah. Excuse me, President Carter turned his back on the Shah. Much of the trouble we see now resulted from that fiasco.

Without a firm and equal policy of dealing with rulers who, by their citizen's view, have outlived their tenure, we will continue to see this scenario work out. Doing as has been done in Libya tends to make those whom have felt that the US "Had their Back" until the breeze changes will alienate those we call "Allies" and will keep any others from becoming an Ally". Simple as that.